Thursday, January 18, 2007

The Sargasso Planetoid!

This one's for you, Lou...

You may have seen this clip before (or like me, seen it when it aired).

Now them rocketships got them some SWEET turning radii. Gotta get me one of them.

Topics for Discussion:

Kairo. Was Pieface replaced because they were trying to be sensitive or was it just so they could use a funky accented character without being criticized? Or, was it merely a way asserting GL's ultraterran aspect?

Sirena. So, do you think it's just her hat, or is her head shaped like that, too? In comics, how exactly do you transliterate her hilariously garbled scream when captured?

Hal's head. Assuming that the mass of the space owl was similar to that of its terran counterparts and judging its speed based on the animation, how much force was applied when the space owl hit Hal's head and knocked him out?

19 comments:

They may have forgotten that Green Lantern's ring wasn't supposed to work on the yellow aliens and rockets. But at least they remembered what was important, Hall Jordan always goes down after getting hit in the head.

I never understood why Kairo was basically a blue Pieface, but they made the Guardians white guys.

I think the only reason for Kairo was so he could go on more space trips with Hal. Pieface is a human mechanic, so it doesn't make a lot of sense for him to be visiting all these planets. But Kairo's an alien, so he fits in better.

It's funny that they make Pieface a blue alien, I assume to avoid being racist, then give him that accent. I reminds me of the "totally not meant to be Japanese" trade federation people in Phantom Menace.Using the same logic, all you have to do is make a character green, then you can have him say "dis suitcase sho am heaby" all you like.

Another wikipedia page (one for the Superman/Aquaman Adventure Hour) lists Kairo's voice as Paul Frees (Boris Badenov, Burgermeister Meisterburger, and tons of other voices), which I tend to believe over Ted Knight.

I caught this episode on New Year's Eve on Boomerang, high above the Midwest on a JetBlue flight -- every seatback has a TV screen tuned to satellite cable, so I could pass the flight flipping between cheesy superhero goodness like this, the Filmation Aquaman shorts, Superfriends, and the Twilight Zone marathon on Sci-Fi. So wonderful.

A smallish owl like that one would be no more than 8 ounces. It's hard to tell how fast it was going, but typical owls cruise at 20-30 mph. That gives us a momentum of 6.82 foot-pounds per second.

From the crude animation of the collision, it looks like it took half a second for the owl to impart it's full momentum into Hal's head. That makes 13.6 pounds of force into the back of Hal's head.

To put that in perspective, I measured my own force output by punching my bathroom scale. (This is what I do for you, Scipio.) A fake greeting punch (like the "Hey, champ!" amongst drunk friends) generates about 25 pounds of force.

So just trying to pat Hal on the back (and aiming a little high) could floor the man.